Coin Lore column from April 20, 2015, issue of Coin World

As the world’s economy was collapsing, Frederick Simpich, assistant
editor of the National Geographic Magazine, explored the
nature of gold for an article, “Men and Gold,” published in the April
1933, issue of the magazine.

Americans were allowed to keep $100 face value in gold coin, jewelry
and numismatic items. The rest was eventually melted, converted to
ingots and shipped to Fort Knox.

But as Simpich researched his subject from 1931 to 1933, gold was
seemingly everywhere. Details in the article place his Philadelphia
Mint visit in the first half of 1931, when the Mint was producing
200,020 1-balboa coins for Panama.

He wrote, “Gold coins of $5, $10, and $20 are now minted, known as
half eagles, eagles, and double eagles.”

Simpich noted that while technically $450 million in gold coins were
in circulation, few people actually used them. “It does not really
circulate, because most people prefer the more convenient paper
dollar,” he wrote.

At the Philadelphia Mint, Simpich wrote, “You feel a vague sense of
the Nation’s power as you walk through vault after vault. ... Tiers of
gold bars and bags of gold coin are piled ceiling high. There is so
much gold that no one man could even count it; he wouldn’t live long
enough. Farther along, in the big minting room, you stop beside a
coining machine. From it flows a bright stream of ‘Balboas,’ which are
being minted for Panama. The 27 machines in that room, in an
eight-hour day, can stamp 1,260,000 coins.”

Today, the 1931 silver-dollar size balboas sell for about $100 each
in Uncirculated. The double eagles are worth a bit more. Of the nearly
3 million gold $20 pieces minted in 1931, only an estimated 100 to 150
survive. The rest fell victim to Mr. Roosevelt’s order and were melted.

Virtually all 1931 Saint-Gaudens $20 double eagles are Uncirculated
and tend to run upwards of $50,000 at auction. In 2010, Heritage sold a Professional Coin Grading
Service Mint State 67 example for $322,000.

The Mint, too, bought gold. “ ‘Every conceivable kind of old gold
finds its way here,’ said a mint official: ‘polo and tennis cups,
medals for school oratory or athletics, lodge pins and badges. We even
bought the gold ornaments from [boxer] John L. Sullivan’s world championship belt!’ ”

The Commission of Fine Artsâ recommendation for the Proof 2014 American Eagle platinum coin, left, brought outrage and derision at the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee meeting. The CCAC recommended the design to the right.

The Commission of Fine Artsâ recommendation for the Proof 2014 American Eagle platinum coin, left, brought outrage and derision at the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee meeting. The CCAC recommended the design to the right.

The Commission of Fine Artsâ recommendation for the Proof 2014 American Eagle platinum coin, left, brought outrage and derision at the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee meeting. The CCAC recommended the design to the right.

The Commission of Fine Artsâ recommendation for the Proof 2014 American Eagle platinum coin, left, brought outrage and derision at the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee meeting. The CCAC recommended the design to the right.

The Commission of Fine Artsâ recommendation for the Proof 2014 American Eagle platinum coin, left, brought outrage and derision at the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee meeting. The CCAC recommended the design to the right.